"In a chest of drawers left by his grandmother, author Randal Keynes found the writing case of Charles Darwin's beloved daughter Annie, who died at the age of ten. Within the box, among the typical keepsakes of a Victorian girlhood, were the notes Darwin kept as he cared for Annie through her final illness.

For Keynes, a great-great-grandson of Darwin, Annie's writing case became the point of entry into the story of Darwin's family life and its influence on the development of his revolutionary understanding of man's place in nature.".

"Keynes takes us into the family's private world and draws on a wealth of previously unseen material to show Darwin at home and trace his private struggle with his faith. Particularly fascinating is his revealing portrait of Emma, Darwin's wife - a complex woman, both tolerant and devout - who was in many ways ahead of her time.

Emma and Charles were close and loving parents, and it was by observing his children that Darwin gleaned many of his insights into man's animal origins as he worked secretly on his theory of evolution.

What emerges with fresh clarity in these pages is the importance of Darwin's life with his family in his deepest thinking, and how his home was his most treasured laboratory - the place where his ground-breaking ideas were formulated, and could be tested, on his most precious subjects - his ten children."--BOOK JACKET.